I don't like Stand Your Ground laws, which I've previously noted, make it difficult to determine the victim from the instigator, especially if only one survives. And yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder warned of unintended consequences, chiefly the creation of a shoot-first climate.

On two occasions, more than two years apart, he committed homicides but was not charged thanks to provisions of Florida's "stand your ground" law. Smith claimed self-defense in both cases and prosecutors agreed. He never faced a judge or jury for fatally shooting Nikita Williams, 18, in February 2008 in a drug-related incident or Breon Mitchell, Williams' 23-year-old half-brother, in December 2010.

So you say that's a rare moment, a criminal using the law to justify his killing of another criminal? Well, think again, or better yet, ask prosecutors in Florida.

A Tampa Bay Times analysis of nearly 200 cases — the first to examine the role of race in "stand your ground" — found that people who killed a black person walked free 73 percent of the time, while those who killed a white person went free 59 percent of the time.

"I don't think judges or prosecutors or whoever works in the field of criminal justice is consciously saying black life is worth less than that of other ethnicities,'' said Kareem Jordan, a criminologist at the University of Central Florida. "But at the end of the day, it could be something that's subconscious going on if you look at how the media depicts black life.''

We can argue how much Stand Your Ground was a subtext in George Zimmerman's actions even if the law was not a direct legal argument in his trial. Stand Your Ground is a badly flawed concept that distorts the basic right of persons to defend against a violent attack when they can't safely retreat. Stand Your Ground removes the duty to consider retreat and replaces it with a dangerous strike-first option.

When you have prosecutors -- from Attorney General Eric Holder to local prosecutors worried that the law has unintended consequences -- maybe it is time to rethink the law.